What the Higgs does is, it gives mass to the fundamental particles. The whole universe is full of something called the Higgs field, Higgs particles if you will. [Referring to the sketch above] The analogy is that these people in a room are the Higgs particles. Now, when a particle moves through the universe, it can interact with these particles. But imagine someone who’s not very popular moves through the room, and everyone ignores them. They just pass through the room very quickly, essentially at the speed of light. They’re massless.

Now imagine someone incredibly important, and popular, and intelligent … walks into the room, they’re surrounded by people, and their passage is impeded. It’s almost like they get heavy, they get massive. And that’s exactly the way the Higgs mechanism works. The … electrons and the quarks in your body, and in the universe that we see around us, are heavy, they’re massive, because they’re surrounded by Higgs particles. They’re interacting with the Higgs field.

The physicists at the LHC are looking to the Higgs particle to finally explain some mysteries of the universe. And that’s why Dr. Hawking doesn’t really want it to be found, he says:

I think it will be much more exciting if we don’t find the Higgs. That will show something is wrong, and we need to think again. I have a bet of $100 that we won’t find the Higgs.

There’s a place in Switzerland where scientists travel on bicycles through tunnels filled with atom-smashing tubes, where the first webpage was born, and where a giant wooden globe watches over researchers replicating the very beginnings of our universe. That place is CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, and on May 3, it held its […]

“Rock star physicist” Brian Cox talks about his work on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Discussing the biggest of big science in an engaging, accessible way, Cox brings us along on a tour of the massive complex — and describes the vital role it’s going to play in understanding our universe. (Recorded March 2008 […]